I am now level 12, and getting into the finer details of ArcheAge, which is great. I have learned the basics of combat, using my mount, become familiar with my skills, and now it’s time to get into some crafting and gardening. The tutorials explained everything pretty easily. There are a few ways players can plant in the world. One, you can plant in the public. Problem with this is that of course anyone can by and steal what you have planted. Especially true in PVP areas. Still, if you don’t feel like paying taxes on a plot of land in a housing area, you may want to try this. Then there are public garden areas (like the one pictured above). This let me plant 10 items (from a list of items that were accepted) for 24 hours before the items would then become public. I found some potatoes someone had forgotten about this way, and quickly harvested them myself. The garden was filled with all manor of thing, chickens, potato, onions, strawberries, etc. It was cute.

It is also where you go to learn about gardening. You plant some potatoes and harvest them, then deliver them to an NPC. See, some themepark in your sandbox while the game explains the basics to you. Again I appreciate these tutorials because I know it won’t be long before I’m out on my own.

Finally at the end of planting you receive a scarecrow. This is how you claim areas as “yours”. I haven’t bothered to use mine yet as the area I was in was pretty crowded, but it will ensure that anything you plant within the space is marked as yours so that others can’t wander by and steal it. Planting comes with timers, each crop or item takes time to grow. The potatoes were very fast, other things have much longer timers.

I also got into a bit of craft and harvesting. Harvesting is pretty straight forward. I didn’t need any fancy tools or any of that nonsense, which I appreciate. You spend labour points for each crafting action. Every player (well, at my level at least) has 1000 labour points. I smelted some iron into ingots, and noticed a lot of recipes for sale by various NPC standing around the crafting stations. Crafting takes time, something I’m not used to – lets face it I’ve been spoiled by instant clicking everything and having it magically appear in my inventory. My best harvesting came from wandering along the “edges” of mountain ranges. In the trees and against rocks. I found lots of iron, a handful of trees, mushrooms, and some clover. Each item is (thankfully) labelled so I know what craft it is for. There are a LOT of items.

I’m also going to start looking for a guild to join. Hopefully I can find one without too much issue. I would prefer to focus on the crafting / harvesting aspect of the game full time with brief meanderings into PVP and combat. If I can find a guild that welcomes crafters and protects them while I craft useful things for them, that would be ideal.

I’m hoping to get into more crafting and some housing next, but we’ll see how that goes. I’m still not familiar with housing zones or how they work or how you actually place / build a home, but so far everything has been explained in a pretty clear way.